In Stockholm county alone, 126 shootings were recorded in 2022, resulting in 28 deaths, as well as 31 attacks with explosives, which was up from 23 deaths as well as 25 attacks with explosives in 2021. Countrywide, Sweden saw 388 shootings resulting in 61 deaths and 90 attacks with explosives last year; the number of deaths was up by one-third over the previous year.
It is already clear that the violence has continued into 2023. Last week on Wednesday, a man was shot dead at a train station in Jordbro, on the southern edge of Stockholm, and last Thursday, a bomb was thrown into an apartment block in nearby Farsta, damaging a stairwell.
Police suspect gang conflicts, many with their roots in competition for control of illegal drug sales, have evolved into a cycle of revenge attacks now sweeping the city. They believe the killing of a man on Christmas Day in the Stockholm suburb of Rinkeby may have triggered subsequent attacks in the city’s south.
A comparative study by Sweden’s National Council for Crime Prevention released in 2021 showed that while gun homicide rates in many other European countries examined had fallen over recent years, rates had risen in Sweden, something the authors suggested could be attributed to “the emergence of a new group dynamic within the criminal milieu whereby shootings have come to precipitate one another.”
Source: Politico